EPA to probe Lisa Jackson’s alias email account

The EPA inspector general wants some answers about Lisa Jackson’s EPA email account in the name of “Richard Windsor.”

The Environmental Protection Agency administrator’s email nom de plume is now officially the subject of an audit by the agency’s inspector general, which received a congressional request to probe EPA’s management of its electronic records.

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There is no word as to whether the IG plans to question the family dog, which — along with Jackson’s former abode of East Windsor Township, N.J. — was the inspiration for the “Richard Windsor” alias that Jackson adopted.

The practice of assigning a secondary email account to the administrator at EPA is not new to this administration. The intent, the agency says, is for the administrator to have a manageable email account in addition to the one that is openly available to the public. Jackson’s alias account is an EPA.gov account, housed on government servers and subject to federal record-keeping and Freedom of Information Act requests, the agency says.

But Jackson’s fictional account name raised questions about government transparency and record-keeping because it was not clearly linked to the EPA chief. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Science Committee have asked the agency for more information about the pseudonymous secondary email account — including whether there are safeguards to ensure that internal accounts are subject to congressional requests for information and documents.

The agency has nothing to hide, an EPA spokesman said Monday. “We said three weeks ago that we welcome any investigation,” and the agency will fully cooperate with the IG, “as we would with any other investigation,” the spokesman said.

The IG plans to audit the agency’s management of electronic records practices to determine whether the agency “follows applicable laws and regulations when using private and alias email accounts to conduct official business,” according to a Dec. 13 memo from the IG.

The office plans to find out whether anyone has been reprimanded or counseled for using private or alias email accounts for official government business and whether anyone encouraged staff to use private or alias accounts when conducting official business.

And the IG wants to know whether there are adequate policies in place to collect, maintain and access records from alias email accounts and whether there is sufficient oversight to make sure EPA employees meet federal records management requirements when it comes to private or alias email accounts.

EPA defended the use of the email account last week in a letter to House Science Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas).

“Given the large volume of emails sent to the public account — more than 1.5 million in fiscal year 2012, for instance — the secondary email account is necessary for effective management and communication between the Administrator and colleagues,” a practice “commonly employed in both the public and the private sector,” Associate Administrator Arvin Ganesan said in the Dec. 12 letter, which was provided by EPA.

The agency has policies and procedures in place to comply with the requirements of the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act, Ganesan said, noting that both the public and alias email accounts “are saved as records and are subject to FOIA requests and Congressional oversight.”

“The secondary email address is redacted from released documents in order to avoid proliferation of use and the attendant loss” of its utility, with the reacted information marked as “Administrator,” so that the origin is clear, Ganesan said in the letter.

Readers' Comments (6)

Hey where are all the folks who made personal attacks on Bobby Jindal's administration for doing the same thing? I seem to have missed your comments. Or is this ANOTHER instance when you ONLY criticize people whom you don't agree with politically? My dad used to call that HYPOCRISY...but what the heck did he know?

Congress...the Republican Congress...has a knack for investigating the African-Americans in the Obama administration. But, they're not racist because a governor selected (not elected) a Black for the Senate.

take money given to EPA--get rid of it...give it to Auto Co. and have an affordable 20/30k electric(ALL electric) on the road..with 110v common hookup..and have it on the road by 2014 or they have to pay back the money with interest..AND THIS CAN BE DONE..if they or whom ever says not possible..THEY LIE..